A Letter of Apology to Those I May Have Alienated During My Brief Day of Fame

Other bloggers had warned me Freshly Pressed fame was a fickle mistress, but I refused to believe she could ever leave me. In the midst of my one day rock star status my wife warned me to temper my expectations for the day after Freshly Pressed, and I shouted back with words that seemed less than poetic in retrospect, “The Paul Johnson success rocket has blasted off, baby, and ain’t never gonna run out of dream fuel! Next stop: Planet Fame and Fortune!”

Didn’t she know I already had tempered my expectations? When I reviewed my statistics and saw my views had gone up 4000% in a day, I knew it wouldn’t last, and that’s why I used a more conservative growth rate of only 3500% a day in predicting my site would be bigger than Facebook by the end of the week.

As my statistics fell back down to earth, and I realized I might have to settle for only being bigger than mySpace, I slowly realized I would owe apologies to people I had willfully alienated when I assumed I would be moving up into a classier stratosphere of associates and would no longer need my old friends and family. I would like to offer the following apologies:

1. I apologize to my friend Todd for calling him an “attention hog” for getting a phone call notifying him of his parents’ divorce during my Freshly Pressed banquet.

2. I apologize to my parents for accusing them of being too supportive, and insisting I would have been a success a decade earlier if they would have rejected my poorly written birthday cards as a child like that Tiger Mom everybody hates.

3. I apologize to my wife for leaving a message on my high school girlfriend’s voice mail, telling her she made a big mistake because I was a huge success now, then crying, then saying the crying was a joke, then crying some more, then saying how much I can bench press, then crying some more just as the voice mail ran out of space.

4. I apologize to my children for hiring stylists to help them obtain a level of attractiveness befitting my fame and for describing them as “gargoyle ugly”.

5. I apologize to my mom for trivializing her contributions to my life by equating the pain of childbirth to the soreness in my legs the morning after my all-night Freshly Pressed dance party.

6. I apologize to Paul McCartney for calling myself the most famous Paul alive and describing his contributions to culture as “perfunctory”.

Second Most Famous Paul.

7. I apologize to the word “perfunctory” for using it so often without knowing its meaning.

8. I apologize to Shakespeare for sending him a taunting Tweet calling myself the new, funnier, and more handsome Shakespeare.

9. I apologize to my high school English teachers for not knowing Shakespeare is dead, and has been for at least twenty years. Not sure who I’ve been exchanging Tweets with, but his terrible punctuation, incorrect spelling of his name Sh8kes-Pierre, and being alive probably should have tipped me off sooner.

10. I apologize to my wife for suggesting that taking my last name, Johnson, was insufficient, but that she should also take my first name, Paul.

If I owe you an apology, please explain the reasons in the comments section below.

Oh my poor deluded hero, me having never been pressed. You just didn’t realize that you came up ONE rung on the ladder – NOT the whole ladder but now you have the increased readership to help boost you up the rest!
Chris

I like # 3. With 400,000 wordpress bloggers it is quite an accomplishment. There may be a drawback. One blogger I follow was pressed and she is determined to answer every comment. She does 100 a day. She started in 1927.

Congrats on being freshly pressed the other day! I enjoyed that post! Isn’t it fun to have the day of fame?!? I had it back in September and it was a whirl wind. I had just started my blog and had like 20 views a day and then it went up to 1,900 views in one day. I was floored. The comments were a mix of people agreeing with me, tearing me a new ass, being nice, being mean etc. I was a little bit of a emotional mess by the end of the day because I was not expecting it. ;) Bask in the fame…absorb it, live it, love it. I am getting you some pimp bling.

You definitely owe me an apology, Paul. I’m so easily influenced – that’s one of my many problems, if I’m being candid – especially by heavy-hitters in WordPressland such as yourself. Like all good little plebs in blogland, I make sure I read all the Freshly Pressed articles each day. So impressed by your celebrity qualities, on a whim I subscribed to your blog. Now I have to see your face and name in my Inbox every single day. And I’m not even your wife! (God forbid)

I think it’s clear why you must now offer me your most sincere apologies. I’ll be waiting right here.

I’d like to draw your readers’ attention to the events at your Freshly Pressed Banquet (The World Is ImPressed: The Good Greatest Greatsbiest) in which you threw your medallion emblazoned with your likeness beating up Alfred Nobel into the giant sheet cake made to look like your birth certificate, calling it “too cakey”.

Well I’m glad you were freshly pressed, because I’ve thoroughly enjoyed everything I’ve read and this was comedy gold. No apologies needed this way. Something interesting I’ve learned if you’re looking to spike traffic again is to entitle your posts in a manner that sounds like something absolutely terrible has happened to you, or like you have done something absolutely terrible to somebody else. My three highest traffic days came once last summer, when a homeless man’s snot-rocket landed in my mouth, once in November, when I wrote about how I got banned from the Catholic church, and once yesterday, when I wrote about how this was “the most difficult post I’d ever written”. Short story – even if the post-Freshly-Pressed high has worn off, you can recreate your own surge with insinuations of impending doom :)

only 10 apologies…that’s not so bad. I fully support the stylist for your children. You WILL be seen in public- they need to look good. Only the famous person is allowed to look like crap and then it is called “style.” If your children look like crap- you are just a bad parent.

I have changed my mind… I NEVER want to be Freshly Pressed… For a while now it is what I THINK that I have been aiming for, what I have always wanted, what I have longed for.
Now I am content to plod along from day to day in my own little literary world.

My husband will be a happier man now that he knows that my mere existence on this earth no longer depends on being FP’d.

Thank you for all those wonderful apologies. I am glad that you are on terra firma once again.
Love p

When I was freshly pressed, I received a death threat. I think that means I’m way more famous than you, so you don’t own me any apologies. You should embrace the ugly side of fame- it makes the pretty side a LOT prettier.

As a fellow ridiculously good looking, popular, wordsmith; I feel that you do not owe me an apology. Simply a nod of the head acknowledging both our mutual respect for one another as well as our supreme level of awesomeness will suffice.

Wait. You were Freshly Pressed? Really? Wow. Let me extend an apology to you. I apologize for being so consumed with my own personal awesomeness that I failed to see someone else might be as awesome. Have I been Freshly Pressed? No. But, I did find an extra french fry in my bag the other day.
I had to MerriamWebster ‘perfunctory’. *yawn* I was not enthused.

I regret to tell you that “Freshly Pressed” is so yesterday. The really hip place to be is Staleee Wrinkled. You never heard of it? I’m not surprised. You probably never heard of “Off Broadway” either.

When I grow up I’m going to be Freshly Pressed and legally change my daughter’s name to Paul. Sure, she’s have to make new friends. All with the names
John, George and Ringo but that shouldn’t be too difficult, Except maybe the Ringo part.
she’ll thank me. She’ll surely worship you.

Just to make sure she’ll know who her benefactor is I’ll send her your home address and phone number.

I definitely think I deserve an apology. See, before you were Freshly Pressed, I had no idea this blog even existed. Then I clicked on that inviting link, and I modeled my life after yours because obviously, you’re the greatest thing ever. All was going well until I got arrested– by Officer Smith.

You should apologise to me now for causing me pain in the jaw for laughing too much. And perhaps for the embarassment of laughing out loud in the office while reading it thus causing my office mates to throw me strange looks.
P.S. LOL!!!

I apologize if you’ve lost the respect of any co-workers and your promotion prospects are in doubt. Your only hope is to forward my site to all your co-workers and hope they put themselves in the same situation.

I would like an apology for my scorched retinas. There was no warning as to the brightness of the fireball your freshly pressed self had become. As a result, I looked upon your blog directly and burned out my rods & cones. Letting us know that we should read the blog only through a paper plate wtih a hole in the center would have been more than reasonable.

A-hem. Yes. I do believe you owe me an apology. When I self-righteously informed you that your new found fame had merely elevated your efforts to “commercial” crap, and then kindly explained that my ultimate coolness depended on never ‘following’ the crowd…I went searching for a new ‘undiscovered’ place to hang out and be seen while resenting being seen.

Appears my instincts were way off. After two nights alone down at my corner mini-mart/gas station sipping burnt coffee through stir-stix in my finest lame’ pantsuit, seems the only ones who noticed me were the Indian guys who fill your gas tanks (they asked if I would bake them meatless lasagna) and the big drunk guy in the belly shirt who sneered at me and said “Move, bioch!” then shoved me aside at the counter to pay for his biker porn mag. It was humiliating and gave me the temporary sensation that maybe there is no other place than right here to go to feel cool.

You need to apologize to me for making me feel all achy breaky sad for you and then realizing, based on the number of comments left here, you’re still doing rather well. You still have the freshly pressed aura hovering over you. So, apology accepted. I forgive you.

Oh highly favoured one!!! What I wouldn’t give to be freshly pressed. I always tick the “This Post Is Awesome” box but alas my meagre little blog never gets the recognition that I desire so badly. Having to apologise for fame really sucks though…

The reason I hate to admit it has nothing to do with ego but the fact that a mastermind, yet insane, criminal has a cartoonifier gun to my head. Earlier he told me, “The next time you read a funny blog and admit it, you’re a cartoon.”

Normally, I’d just lie and say your stuff was “meh,” for the purposes of saving myself from being turned into a two dimensional drawing. But the evil mastermind also tricked me into taking a truth pill a little while ago.

I’m cracking up man and I should be going to sleep. Day job and all because, like you, my time in the Freshly Pressed sun failed to yield the independent wealth I expected.

#3 is the funniest thing I’ve seen all day. Of course it’s only 17 minutes past midnight so you may face challenges later. The Shakespeare point is pretty swell too. You’re a good kid Charlie Brown. Peace off.

i read this and don’t want to waste a comment because i actually read the whole thing and didn’t just skim so i could comment in hopes that someone, somewhere might love me. so, in an effort not to see like i’m trying to be wittier or whiter than you because your number 10 was a 10, i’ll leave a standard spam comment.

the contents of this post were helpful and enjoyable, i hope to connect on a further level in the future like biff tannen.